Two uniformed policemen came for me, and with them I was willing to ride in the patrol wagon to the station. As we started I heard a scream from a woman who had just come around the corner on her way to the clinic. She abandoned her baby carriage, rushed through the crowd, and cried, “Come back! Come back and save me!” For a dozen yards she ran after the van before someone caught her and led her to the sidewalk. But the last thing I heard was this poor distracted mother, shrieking and calling, “Come back! Come back!”
Chapter Eighteen
LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST
“All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.”
OSCAR WILDE
Looking back upon this period fraught with emotional distress, I have no regrets. But, looking ahead, I am grateful that there looms no necessity for repeating those passionate, dangerous, and menacing days.
Out of the raid four separate cases resulted: Ethel was charged with violating Section 1142 of the Penal Code, designed to prevent dissemination of contraceptive information; Fania with having sold an allegedly indecent book entitled What Every Girl Should Know; I, first, with having conducted a clinic in violation of the same Section 1142, second, with violating Section 1530 by maintaining a public nuisance.
I claimed that Section 1142 which forbade contraceptive information to, for, and by anyone was unconstitutional, because no state was permitted to interfere with a citizen’s right to life or liberty, and such denial was certainly interference. Experience had shown it did the case no good merely to defend such a stand in a lower court; it must be carried to a higher tribunal, and only a lawyer versed in whereases and whatsoevers and inasmuch-ases could accomplish this. But I was still hopeful of finding one who was able to see that the importance of birth control could not be properly emphasized if we bowed too deeply before the slow and ponderous majesty of the law.